1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of garden rake constructions in general and in particular to a fore and aft staggered array of the tines on a rake head.
2. Description of Related Art
As can be seen by reference to the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,057,953; 5,033,261; 5,241,812; and 5,934,057, the prior art is replete with myriad and diverse rake constructions.
While all of the aforementioned prior art constructions are more than adequate for the basic purpose and function for which they have been specifically designed, they are uniformly deficient with respect to their failure to provide a simple, efficient, and practical rake construction that insures that each sweep of the rake collects the maximum amount of leaves and debris possible.
As most homeowners and gardeners are aware, there are no commercially available garden rakes that are more than marginally efficient in collecting all of the leaves and debris in a single sweep of the rake.
In addition, this phenomenon is particularly noticeable in those geographic areas that have mast crops such as acorns or the like; wherein, the spacing between the tines of the heads of a conventional rake allows a large portion of the acorns, etc., to pass through the tines in a single pass.
As a consequence of the foregoing situation, there has existed a longstanding need for a new and improved rake construction which employs a novel staggered tine array that effectively captures leaves and debris in a single pass; and, the provision of such a construction is the stated objective of the present invention.
Briefly stated, the staggered tine rake construction that forms the basis of the present invention comprises in general a handle unit, a front rake unit, a rear rake unit and a mounting unit for securing the front rake unit to the rear rake unit.
As will be explained in greater detail further on in the specification, both the front and rear rake units share the same basic construction including a mounting socket that captively engages one end of a plurality of rake tines whose intermediate portions are engaged by a spreader bar which equally spaces the tines from one another.
In addition, the heart of this invention involves not only the front to rear spacing of the respective set of tines on both the front and rear rake units, but more importantly the fact that the rear set of tines is laterally offset from the front set of tines such that each rear tine is disposed intermediate a pair of front tines and vice versa.
As a result of this arrangement, any debris or leaves that are not captured by the rear set of tines will in all probability contact and be caught by the front set of tines. Furthermore, as debris and leaves accumulate between the front and rear rake units, the probability increases that all of the debris in the path of the rake construction will be gathered up in one pass as opposed to the multiple passes required by rakes having a single set of generally aligned tines.